Giro d'Italia 2024 contenders: Can anyone stop Tadej Pogačar?

Many would have you believe that the 2024 Giro d'Italia is already over before it has even begun. 

Tadej Pogačar will rightly arrive at the grande partenza in Turin as the favourite for overall victory, with the likes of Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) and Romain Bardet (dsm-firmenich PostNL) expected to battle it out for the final two spots on the podium behind him. 

However, the Italian Grand Tour is far from a foregone conclusion, according to former winner, Vincenzo Nibali. Speaking to La Gazetta dello Sport, Nibali acknowledged that Pogačar was the rider to watch but insisted that the race could still produce unexpected twists.

"He’s going to have to sweat it out for overall victory, in a Grand Tour, nothing ever truly comes easy," Nibali said. “You have to be perfect for 21 days, 20 isn’t enough," Nibali said. "Now, I don't wish any misfortune on Tadej, of course not. But speaking in general, a single bad day, which can happen to anyone, can change a lot of things."

Away from the GC battle, the race promises to provide plenty of drama with several stages looking like they could be one for a breakaway artist to get up the road. Two individual time trials also provide the likes of Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) to do what he does best. 

The sprinters will also get a chance to have their say on the latter stages, including on stage nine into Naples. Belgian Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) has started the season in strong form and could be the man to beat to the maglia ciclamino.

We've pulled together an in depth look at all of the men to watch out for once the Giro gets underway.  

Geraint Thomas

Age: 37
Nationality: Welsh
Team: Ineos Grenadiers
Giro d'Italia starts: 5
Best GC result: 2nd, 2023
Best stage result: 2nd x6, 2012-2023

Welshman Thomas returns to the Giro one year on from his heartache of losing the maglia rosa by just 14 seconds to Primož Roglič. As usual when the veteran Brit starts the Giro, he will turn one year older during the race’s final week (38 on May 25), but last season was yet another reminder that despite his advancing years he should not be overlooked.

He will thrive in the long time trials and expect to hold his own in the mountains, making him one of the favourites to land a spot on the podium. 

He hasn’t had any standout results this season, but that’s part of the Thomas playbook: slowly build form and condition, and peak for the races that truly matter. “It’s easy to take for granted that nine times out of 10 I hit my goals, and that I am in the shape I want to be when I get there,” he recently told CW.

Tadej Pogačar

Age: 25
Nationality: Slovenian
Team: UAE Emirates
Giro d'Italia starts: 0
Best GC result: N/A
Best stage result: N/A

Tadej Pogačar is no stranger to being the favourite for a bike race. At pretty much every event the UAE Team Emirates rider lines up for, he is the one to watch. With a 60% win rate so far in 2024 – 11 opportunities, seven wins – you can see why. 

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, to misquote Shakespeare, but on Pogačar’s head, that crown – or helmet – appears light. The 25-year-old Slovenian simply rides away from everyone else, without much thought. It is entirely possible that he will do the same thing at the Giro d’Italia, perhaps even more easily, given the absence of his bête noire Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and the two other members of the ‘big four’, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe).

Pogačar has never ridden the Giro d’Italia before, so it will be a new test, but equally, he has never finished lower than third at the five Grand Tours he has ridden. With 14 stage wins across those four Tours de France and one Vuelta a España, no one in their right mind would bet against him. He is able to take time on punchy stages as well as big days in the mountains, so it would not be a surprise to see him take the maglia rosa early on in the race; the summit finish on stage two seems ripe for him to make a mark.

At the Volta a Catalunya last month, it was clear that Pogačar was fundamentally a step above the others, and it is hard to see where a challenge might come from at the Giro. “Right now it’s the best I’ve ever seen him,” Israel-Premier Tech’s George Bennett told Cycling Weekly at that race. “He's definitely better than last year already. I know he’s made some changes in the off season and he’s on a different level. He was already pretty good but now he’s very good.”

For his part, Pogačar is clear that he now wants to be “the best ever”. With triumph at the Giro possible, and a tilt at the Tour de France to follow, it is within his grasp.

Dani Martínez

Age: 28
Nationality: Colombian
Team: Bora-Hansgrohe
Giro d'Italia starts: 3
Best GC result: 5th, 2021
Best stage result: 3rd, 2021

Back in 2021 when Egan Bernal won the Giro, the man who was credited with making it all possible was his fellow Colombian, Dani Martínez. The then-Ineos Grenadier was the race’s standout super domestique in the mountains and even rode to fifth overall. Aged 25 at the time, it was the clearest indication yet that Martínez was set for a strong future as a GC rider himself.

Yet despite winning the Itzulia Basque Country in 2022 and podiuming in other races, Martínez has failed to truly kick on, and faltered as a co-leader at the last two Tours de France. Last winter, Ineos parted ways with him, and Bora-Hansgrohe snapped him up on a four-year deal.

Talk of him potentially winning a three-week race has understandably cooled off, but there is little doubt that Martínez does possess the characteristics to seriously challenge when the stars align. 

Ben O'Connor

Age: 28
Nationality: Australian
Team:  Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale
Giro d'Italia starts: 3
Best GC result: 20th, 2020
Best stage result: 1st, 2020

The likeable Aussie isn’t hiding his ambitions at the Giro: “I’m going there to finish on the podium,” he told CW. Now in his fourth season with AG2R, he has shown impressive consistency since breaking through at the 2020 Giro with a stage win in the Dolomites. 

Fourth in the following year’s Tour de France confirmed his potential, and since then he has regularly been in contention for stage wins and the GC in almost all the one-week stage races he has competed in. He warmed up for the Giro by finishing third at the Tour of the Alps.

Time trialling remains O’Connor’s Achilles heel – he typically loses 30 seconds every 10km to the best testers – and he knows that, despite improvements against the clock, he will have to make up time on the hillier and mountainous days to compensate for expected losses in the two time trials.

Romain Bardet

Age: 33
Nationality: French
Team:  dsm-firmenich PostNL
Giro d'Italia starts: 2
Best GC result: 7th, 2021
Best stage result: 2nd, 2021

In what is mooted to be his final season as a professional, Romain Bardet sits alongside Tadej Pogačar and Geraint Thomas in targeting the Giro-Tour double. While no-one is seriously contemplating such an eventuality, it would please many in the sport if Bardet was able to win a Grand Tour, almost a decade on from when he twice finished on the Tour de France’s podium.

It’s indicative of his racing style – sticking with the front group as opposed to launching attacks – that the Frenchman has only ever won 10 races in his otherwise storied career, but he is always in the mix. Indeed, out of the 12 three-week races he’s finished, his worst GC finish is 25th, and that was at the 2021 Vuelta a España where stage hunting was his goal from the outset

He will be sharing team leadership with sprinter Fabio Jakobsen, but should Bardet remain injury- and illness-free, a podium finish is certainly plausible.

Ones to watch

Julian Alaphilippe

Age: 31
Nationality: French
Team: Soudal Quick-Step

Making his Giro debut, the former two-time world champion recently revealed that he raced through the spring Classics with a fractured knee. 

Bludgeoned by public criticism from his Soudal-QuickStep manager Patrick Lefevere, the Frenchman has struggled for race-winning form in the past two seasons, but he has the skill set to at least win a stage. 

Filippo Ganna

Age: 27
Nationality: Italian
Team: Ineos Grenadiers

Remarkably for a man deemed the best time triallist in the world, the Hour record holder has only won one of his past five time trials. 

He will, however, be the favourite to win stage 14’s TT, and his ever-expanding repertoire of sprinting and breakaway appearances points to him adding to his tally of six Giro stage victories.

Christophe Laporte

Age: 31
Nationality: French
Team: Visma-Lease a Bike

Called up to Visma-Lease a Bike’s Giro squad to replace the injured Wout van Aert, the reigning European champion has developed into one of the sport’s strongest one-day riders since joining his current employers in 2022. 

As well as assisting as Visma’s two leaders, he is likely to be a contender himself on the transition and lumpy stages.  

GC wildcards

Nairo Quintana

Age: 34
Nationality: Colombian
Team: Movistar

It’s 10 years since Quintana became the first Colombian to win the Giro d’Italia, but it will take an almighty effort for him to repeat the feat this time around. This will be his first Grand Tour since he was stripped of his sixth place finish at the 2022 Tour de France after tramadol was found in his blood samples. 

Upon returning to Movistar in the winter following a year away from the WorldTour, he has struggled for form and crashed out of the Volta a Catalunya. But he’s recovered and has a point to prove. 

Thymen Arensman

Age: 24
Nationality: Dutch
Team: Ineos Grenadiers

Ineos Grenadiers favour a multi-pronged approach in three-week races, and Dutchman Arensman will be sharing leadership duties with Geraint Thomas. Sixth on GC at both the 2022 Vuelta a España and 2023 Giro point to a rider who could knock on the door of a podium finish. 

He has shown on several occasions that he has got what it takes to put significant chunks of time into his rivals in time trials and in the high mountains. 

Luke Plapp

Age: 23
Nationality: Australian
Team: Jayco-AIUla

Australian champion Plapp broke his contract with Ineos at the end of last season to sign a four-year deal with Jayco-Alula where he was promised opportunities to head up the team’s GC ambitions alongside Simon Yates. 

The Giro, just his second Grand Tour, will be his first major test, but he showed at March’s Paris-Nice that he can duel it with the best in the mountains, holding the lead for two days in the Race to the Sun, but eventually finished sixth. 

The sprinters

The in-form sprinter leading into the Giro is Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), who raced to seven victories by just days into April. Selection dilemmas and team hierarchies have limited him to just one Grand Tour the previous two seasons, so he’s eager to make up for lost time.

As anticipated as Merlier’s return is the Grand Tour debut of Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike), the 22-year-old who has been winning WorldTour races for fun over the last year or so. One advantage the young Dutchman has over Merlier is a greater resistance for climbing, which could prove especially useful on the awkward hillier stages. It’s something he shares with Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck), winner of a stage here and three at the Vuelta a España last year, and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché - Wanty), the Eritrean sensation showing some signs of form again after it dipped following his breakthrough Giro two years ago.

Less promising is the form of Caleb Ewan (Jayco-AlUla) and Fabio Jakobsen (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), though both are too purely talented to write off. And finally, given his status as reigning maglia ciclamino champion, young home favourite Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) will be marked as the man to beat, and has shown further signs of improvement already this year following an impressive Classics campaign.